I’m closing in on a week in the Sunshine State. The sheer abundance of food here blows me away. Pretty much every day, I try something I’ve never tried – tiny thai bananas, curry leaf, sour tangerines, yellow-finned starfruit. At market, curly kale and purple-top turnips sit beside key limes and sugarcane, a juxtaposition of the tropical and familiar. The seasons are mysterious and giving.

It’s funny to be kicking myself back into gear, creaking back to life at this time of year, as Christmas approaches. One of my favorite things about being a farmer is how our own cycles tune into those of the crops. The fall is a long slow slide towards hibernation, planning and resting and doing other things. But here I am in the first week of December, picking arugula and planting peas.

We went to a big Sunday farmers market today in Pinecrest, about half an hour north of the farm. It was first one at a new location, so all the vendors were a little unsure of what to expect, but the turnout was smashing. For the first few hours it was all we could do to keep food on the table. I didn’t get too much of a chance to poke around, but we were stationed right across from this glorious rig:

So it was a great success. That being said, I am really excited to go back to the island and not do a market. I’m realizing that I’ve been working markets for about five years now, and they’re exhausting, and the excitement of the interaction isn’t as big of a motivator as it once was. Part of farm life is really tuning into the rhythms of a place. To disrupt that flow to go to a parking lot and hawk wares out of a tent for hours to hundreds of customers is a trip, especially when you’ve become accustomed to the relatively predictable patterns of the plants and people you work with. I can’t wait to make a little stand by my growing field, trick it out just the way i like it, and be done with loading tents and tables every week.